BLACKWELL’S RARE BOOKS antiquarian & modern Blackwell’s Rare Books 48-51 Broad Street, Oxford, OX1 3BQ Direct Telephone: +44 (0) 1865 333555 Switchboard: +44 (0) 1865 792792 Email: [email protected] Fax: +44 (0) 1865 794143 www.blackwell.co.uk/rarebooks Our premises are in the main Blackwell bookshop at 48-51 Broad Street, one of the largest and best known in the world, housing over 200,000 new book titles, covering every subject, discipline and interest, as well as a large secondhand books department. There is lift access to each floor. The bookshop is in the centre of the city, opposite the Bodleian Library and Sheldonian Theatre, and close to several of the colleges and other university buildings, with on street parking close by. Oxford is at the centre of an excellent road and rail network, close to the London - Birmingham (M40) motorway and is served by a frequent train service from London (Paddington). Hours: Monday–Saturday 9am to 6pm. (Tuesday 9:30am to 6pm.) Purchases: We are always keen to purchase books, whether single works or in quantity, and will be pleased to make arrangements to view them. Auction commissions: We attend a number of auction sales and will be happy to execute commis- sions on your behalf. Blackwell’s Rare Books online blackwell.co.uk/rarebooks Our website contains listings of our stock with full descriptions and photographs, along with links to PDF copies of previous catalogues, and full details for contacting us with enquiries about buying or selling rare books. Please mention Catalogue B184 when ordering. All books subject to prior sale. Front cover illustration: Item 16 Rear cover illustration: Item 249 Part I Antiquarian 1. Addison (Joseph) Miscellaneous Works, in Verse and Prose... In three volumes. Consisting of such as were never before Printed in Twelves. J. and R. Tonson and S. Draper, 1753, some gatherings rather browned, pp. [iv], xxxiii, [3], [1]-4, [2], 5-267, [1]; 328, [8, ads]; 321, [1], 12mo, contemporary sprinkled calf, spines divided by raised bands between gilt rules, red morocco lettering pieces, the compartment below these dyed black and numbered in gilt, a little rubbed and chipped, bookplate removed from front pastedowns, good (ESTC T89176) £100 Also issued as part of a set of Addison’s works in 12 vols., comprising several specific collections like this one which were sold on their own and stand as complete in themselves. 2. Aelfric Grammaticus, Abbot of Eynsham. A Testimonie of Antiquitie, shewing the auncient fayth in the Church of England touching the sacrament of the body and bloude of the Lord here publikely preached, and also receaved in the Saxons tyme, above 600. yeares agoe. [Edited by Matthew Parker and John Joscelyn.] [colophon:] John Day... Cum privilegio Regiæ Maiestatis. [1566?], fore-margin of the title-page sometime torn away (no loss of text, though slight loss to an early inscription at the head of the title), some mild damp-staining, slightly more pronounced at the end, and corners curling, but an attractive and large copy, ff. 48, 50-75, [14], (A-L8), small 8vo, resewn in the original binding of limp vellum, being a fragment of a twelfth-century manuscript, lacking spine, contemporary ownership inscription on verso of last leaf of Richard Ballett - twice, once in a secretary hand and again in italic, early note on upper cover ‘Broughton Lib’, (STC 159.5: variant with the royal privilege at the bottom of the title-page, and the inverted ‘e’ of Maiestatis corrected) £12,000 The first edition of the first printed Old English text, and the first book printed using Anglo-Saxon types. ‘Day struck up a relationship with Matthew Parker, to whom he proved a willing foil in the archbishop’s cherished antiquarian projects. In 1566 he published for Parker Aelfric’s Testimonie of Antiquitie, a book which required the design and casting of special Anglo-Saxon characters’ (ODNB). Another edition probably of the same year corrects the errata, adds marginal notes, and adjusts the foliation and signatures, among other more minor changes. Aelfric of Eynsham (c.950-c.1010) was the most prolific writer of his time and this text, a version of his ‘Sermo in Die Pascae’, was selected by Matthew Parker for theological reasons – careful editing smoothed out ambiguities in Aelfric’s text, discarding as interpolations references to physical transubstantiation. Parker could then argue that the English Protestant movement was a return to original principles in which the Catholic church had become corrupt. ‘A Testimonie was merely the first in a long series of books in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in which Old English was used, in large or small part, in the polemical battle between Protestants and Catholics’ (Murphy, ‘John Foxe, Martyrologist’, English Studies, 1968, p. 517). ‘It was a shrewd blow, well timed and accurately delivered. Money, time and learning were lavishly expended on it, because it was politically as well as doctrinally important... the printing of the first book in an Anglo- Saxon fount was a severe test, triumphantly accomplished... in the face of great technical difficulties’ (Bromwich, ‘The First Book Printed in Anglo-Saxon Types’, Trans. of the Cam. Bib. Soc., 1962, pp. 271-2). Whether by accident or design, the manuscript used for binding this copy is appropriate to one of the political purposes of the book. The text (inside the front cover) is from the fourth chapter of the Acts of the 1 Apostles, and includes the first 3 /2 words of verse 13: ‘Videntes autem Petri constantiam, et Joannis, comperto quod homines essent sine litteris, et idiotæ, admirabantur’ (‘When they saw the outspokenness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated and ordinary men, they were astonished’). Matthew Parker, Queen Elizabeth’s Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury, wanted not only to make known that the mystery of transubstantiation was not Anglo-Saxon doctrine, but also that the early church used the language of the people: not Latin, but Old English. 1 BLACKWELL’S RARE BOOKS 3. Aeschylus. Trageodiae Septem, cum versione Latina. [Two vols.] Glasgow: Excudebat Foulis. [1794], Veneunt Londini, apud T. Payne; Payne & Mackinlay: Oxoniae, apud Jos. Cooke, 1806, LARGE AND FINE PAPER COPY, half-titles discarded, a few gatherings rather foxed, some minor spotting elsewhere, a few later pencil notes, the text numbered as spreads rather than leaves or pages, pp. [iii], 234; [i], 202, 8vo, contemporary half dark red skiver, marbled boards, good (Gaskell 702 Variant) £400 Gaskell records this variant, with cancel title-pages dated 1806 (but referring to the original date in error as 1794, rather than 1796), and speculates that the same issue ‘no doubt appeared originally in 1796, with the title-pages uncancelled, but no such copy has been seen’. The text reprints the 1795 folio edition, which was edited by Porson. 4. [Allott (Robert), editor] Wits Theater of the Little World. Printed by I[ames] R[oberts] for N[icholas] L[ing], 1599, FIRST EDITION, a few catchwords trimmed, first 2 and last 4 leaves soiled, small hole in blank area of title, repair to lower margin of title, rust hole in X5 with the loss of a few letters, ff. [iv], 269, [7], small 8vo, nineteenth-century dark burgundy morocco, double gilt fillets on sides, double gilt rules on either side of the 3 raised bands on the spine and at head and foot, lettered and dated in gilt direct, signature of John Couchman dated 1699 on Hh1r, (ESTC S100300; Grolier, Langland to Wither 15; Pforzheimer 1094) £5,000 In this copy the Dedication is not signed and the text at the head of Bb1r is not corrected (a faint brown shadow over the uncorrected 4 lines may suggest that the correction slip was once pasted over). Dedicated to John Bodenham, this seems to be the third in the series of four, begun with Bodenham’s Politeuphuia, 1598, though its exact place in the scheme is as uncertain as the identity of the editor, Richard Allott. There are two candidates, one an Oxford man, the other Cambridge, with the former seeming likelier. In The Table at the end a few extra headings have been added in an early hand, and there are corresponding underlinings in the text. Scarce: ESTC lists just 7 copies in the UK, and 10 in the USA in 8 institutions. 5. Augustine (Saint) De civitate dei cum commento. [Venice: Octavianus Scotus] 18th February, 1489/90, large woodcut to verso of title-page, woodcut printer’s device to final leaf, initials supplied in red or blue and printed capitals picked out in red, two larger initials in red and blue, a 2cm tall waterstain with attendant softening to lower margin of first two-thirds of the volume, first two gatherings with resulting paper repairs, one leaf (A6) stained, small rusthole to final leaf touching one character, a little other light browning, intermittent short marginalia in an early hand, a longer note faded from recto of title-page, ff. [264], folio (309 x 210 mm), old wooden boards recently recovered in brown calf in period style, tooled in blind, two fore-edge clasps, pastedowns preserving the vellum musical manuscript binder’s waste from previous binding, good (ISTC ia01245000; Goff A1245; Bod-inc A531; BMC V 437) £9,500 Augustine’s City of God, including the the most substantial medieval commentary - which was also the only commentary to see print in the incunable period - originally written in the fourteenth century by Thomas Waleys and Nichoas Trevet. There were numerous incunable editions of the text; this is the second printed by Bonetus Locatellus for his frequent collaborator Octavianus Scotus - the two produced more than 120 incunables together, with the very first being their first version of this text, in 1487.